


Fragile Things

by CaskaLangley



Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: M/M, Romance, Sibling Incest, a lot of overthinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:00:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27728471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaskaLangley/pseuds/CaskaLangley
Summary: "Shun is Athena's Knight" Hyoga had said once, making fun of him, "Ikki is Shun's Knight".
Relationships: Phoenix Ikki/Andromeda Shun
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Fragile Things

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cose fragili](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7932283) by [CaskaLangley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaskaLangley/pseuds/CaskaLangley). 
  * A translation of [Cose fragili](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7932283) by [CaskaLangley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaskaLangley/pseuds/CaskaLangley). 



NOTES:

Wow!I 'm so happy so see this little fanfic of mine translated in English! And I have to thank the fabulous [fiveofwords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveofswords/pseuds/fiveofswords) for that. We're stuck together in this ikkishun hell and oh lord, it's so beautiful here ☆

The titles of the various paragraphs are quotations from "House of incest" by Anaïs Nin (it's funny because the book itself is not quite _literally_ about incest like this story is...)

About that, please remember: we're talking incest here. It's respectful and consensual but, you know, still incest. 
    
    
    ---  
    
      
    
    

_ “You don't find love, it finds you.  _

_ I _ _ t's got a little bit to do with destiny, fate, and what's written in the stars.” _

\- Anaïs Nin

**1\. The secret of joy is mastering pain.**

This moment is like a painting. A balance that can only be wished by the gods, although Ikki knows all too well how capricious and sometimes greedy they really are - he has the proof, the marks engraved on his skin. And indeed, in a second Shun loses his grip, his hitherto deft fingers get stuck, the flowers fall. It was the wind that got in the way, Ikki saw it, but still Shun blames himself and starts again, the little girl nods and puts flowers in the braid she made for him - crooked, clumsy, the hair slips, but in Shun's hair, the flowers have a warm color.

The sunset is near, it is touching the sea. There is not much light left, the crown falls off him again. Ikki approaches, his footsteps muffled by the sand. He bends down, takes the flowers, begins to weave them. It’s almost an automatic gesture, he can’t explain how he does it, he has always been a bad teacher. Unable to explain, really unfit to listen. Ikki can't do it, this thing of speaking, this flow of receiving, reworking, sending back - this thing that Shun finds so natural. But he still knows how to make flower wreaths, or at least it seems so, while he is holding a slightly imprecise one - some stems are too short, some leaves too thick - but it has the right shape, holds, and both Shun and the child look at it like it's something exceptional.

Why does Shun look at everything he does like this? Why can't he accept that even Ikki sometimes falls within the threshold of the normal, even the banal? The garland loses a petal. He made it, but suddenly fears he'll destroy it with his indelicate hands - _what happened, Ikki, with the last thing you tried to hold?_ \- So he passes it to Shun who crowns the girl proudly. The sun sets, her mother calls her. It comes from the only guesthouse nearby. It's small, frugal, nothing remotely like their rooms at House Kido. This is what they were looking for: a distant island, few simple people, welcoming but reserved, a single tiny village on the coast and only nature which surrounds them with its edges undisturbed.

No wars, hidden cloths. Nobody who knows who they are.

Shun is still sitting, looking at him from below. His pale skin emerges from the evening like the reflection of the moon on a pond, his eyes are two water lilies, galaxies in bloom. 

He smiles at him: "Nii-san, you always surprise me!".

Ikki feels the need - it's a rush, like bile - to give a background to that gesture, to give it weight, in other words to talk to him: of the rare flowers on Death Queen Island, of the rarest of all - of Esmeralda. How old would she be now? How old, if fate hadn't put Ikki in her way? He had imagined holding her close in the battle against Lymnades, and it had shocked him to realize how much he had grown, how many new scars he had, and how much she had remained a child. Memories are ungrateful, they don't heal. They slip away in time, less and less clear, they become the memory of a memory. Esmeralda would never change, but Ikki did, and sooner or later he would lose her again. He felt sad. Not angry, not desperate, but sad. And he found that there was something sweet about letting himself be sad too.

_You always knew, didn't you?_

Shun waits for the question, even if he doesn't know it. He doesn't even know that his Cassandra green eyes have already given him the answer.

"Should we go?" Ikki asks.

"Where?"

"For a walk."

"Already too long in the same place?"

"Yeah."

Shun reaches out his hand, Ikki helps him up. _I won't touch you more than that_ . He saw what his hands do to precious things: they destroy them. And Shun, Shun must be whole. Shun who would cry for the moon if he could, Shun who would defy the sun if he had to. Shun who holds his hand now, for a very long moment, the wind shakes his hair and brings his scent to him, a mixture of salt and fructose. _I won't touch you more than that_ . Ikki feels his knuckles under his thumb, one by one. _I won't touch you more than that_. Shun smiles as he looks down, their hands still together.

**2\. You can't save people, you can only love them.**

"What were you dreaming of?"

Ikki slipped out of sleep and hung in a place in between, without borders. The pale face floating above him held one world and the other together, it was the least common dream, the polar core. He reached out with his fingers to touch him. It wasn't her, he hadn't been deluded for a long time, and it wasn't Shun either, though it was. It was the whole of his desires, the things Ikki knew as love, affection, home, and which found no incarnation outside the contours of that face. He touched his cheekbones, his eyebrows. _I was born to find these eyes_ . He knew the reason for that thought, but a second later he didn't know anymore.

As Shun was about to touch him, he took his hand away.

"What I always dream about," he said.

When Ikki was at House Kido, he spent his nights in the garden. He could never spend too much time alone in one room, his thoughts were crowded, and he’d find himself sweating. He had slept in a basement for six years, six years in which his body had forgotten what a bed was to convince himself to pass out on the straw mattress or on the bare stone, when there were too many broken bones and he had lost too much blood. Ikki had grown up, but every closed door was still that door, and he’s still that child, destroyed and with one single thought: _Shun. I managed to spare Shun from this._

Ikki sat down. The soft grass was a luxury, the celestial vault a song that said: you can escape if you want.

But he didn't want to. Not with Elysium's wounds still fresh, not with what had happened to Shun. Shun under whose window Ikki spent his nights, like a sentry.

"Shun is Athena's Knight" Hyoga had said once, making fun of him, "Ikki is Shun's Knight". 

Shun put a hand to his forehead. He was waiting for permission, but he was not afraid: Ikki was. 

He closed his eyes - his brother's fingers on his scar.

He opened them again - the thick fans of his lashes, two sweet shadows on his cheekbones.

Shun asked cautiously: "Her?"

"You."

He lowered his hand, blinked. Ikki looked down.

“I'm faster every night. I throw myself at her, cover her, absorb the blow. I have the reflexes I have now, the power I have now… I save her. Every Night."

A dog was barking. Smell of paint. The wind, but is not enough.

“And then there is you. On the throne of Hades. " He swallowed the silence, he had had it in his throat for too long. It was the first time they talked about it. “In the beginning I think it will be the same thing, that it will be enough just to be stronger, even faster, to have even more power… but not this time. I realize this, and I think about what I thought that day: it's over; I won’t be able to save him from this. "

"Nii-san ..." Shun began, but Ikki stopped him.

“Don't say anything, don't console me. That's right, I didn't save you. Neither your body nor your soul. I gave up, and by giving up I have betrayed you, and I have betrayed Athena, I have betrayed my sacred duty as a Saint. I am selfish. I condemned the world to save you, but I did it for me. Because at the last moment I couldn't think that the world deserved to be saved without you."

Shun was silent. He had bit his lower lip and was now wet, swollen. Ikki wanted to take it between two fingers, pull it. He wanted ... That was the problem; with words, you put the burden on those who receive them, but you don't necessarily get rid of them. In most cases, you will just create one that is the same, inflict the same pain on another. But weight didn't scare Shun. He wielded massive chains as if they were air. As Ikki told him "forget it" he was already taking his right hand and following the scratches on the back: "Are this the marks of that day, when you halted your fist?"

He nodded. Shun's fingers spiraled up his forearm - in out, out in. An energy followed him, under his skin, an element of his own blood reacting to his.

_Our blood. The same blood._

"And these," he continued, his voice low not out of fear, but for security, "the strings of Mime's zither?"

Ikki nodded again, but for what purpose? Shun already knew by heart the map of his marks, all the cuts, all the bruises, all the bones still fragile from a recent wound, the ribs on which he had not been able to lean for days after the collapse of the palace of Neptune.

"You heal easily," Shun said, “but among us you are the one who has the most scars." he rose to his knees and leaned over his shoulders. Shun's hair on his face, the scent of Shun's neck. The simplicity with which his body adapted to Shun's.

_Before I was nothing._

A moment of Shun, snatched from time.

_When I saw you in the crib, I chose my shape._

Hands on his back - the wound of Pandora's spear. Delicate fingers ran along it, without hurting. Shun leaned with his chin over his shoulder.

"No selfish person would hurt himself like this for someone."

Ikki thought about hugging him, but didn't.

He thought about looking at him, but didn't.

He tore up the grass, dug his fingers into the dirt, carefully brushed it off. "Go to sleep."

"Do you think only you dream, Nii-san ...?"

Only then was it clear to him. Why Shun was there and not in his room, why he went to look for him. He too had his wounds, his ghosts, perhaps more than all of them, because it was the only one to listen to them before they were even real

“Then you can stay here if you want. But in silence. "

Shun smiled and didn't speak, not even to say yes. He lay down beside him, close enough to reach him, not enough to touch him. Ikki watched him as long as the moon allowed, and then he imagined it.

_I saw you as soon as you were born, and I felt it._

_Your immortal soul, speaking to my immortal soul._

_I was expecting you from a previous life. I dreamed of you, I looked for you, I hoped you existed. I was waiting for you._

**3\. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you.**

In the evening the island is lit up with torches and lanterns, there is a smell of wood, incense, citrus, the sound of percussion instruments. An old lady gives Shun a grapefruit and he accepts, smiles, moves like the branches of a tree. Everyone likes Shun, Ikki remains at a distance, cautious. He observes his brother existing in the world with unsettling naturalness, as if he had never been torn from it, observes the habits settling on his body, the days indulging him in his quiet but implacable change. Shun belongs to Athena in the same way he belongs to the sea, the earth, the rain, the sun. Shun will adapt - he has already adapted - to this reality, he will move within it despite the past traumas because he is part of it, he understands it more than them, he loves it more than them, because he knows more than them how to grasp the tenderness of defects, the beauty of infinite fragility. Not for nothing, like their friends, Shun is a warrior. Ikki, on the other hand ... Ikki is war. He doesn't know how to live in peace.

Shun comes towards him. The light of the torches lights up his face, illuminates his eyes with a brilliant glow.

"Do you know what that lady asked me?"

"What?"

"Who was that handsome boy?"

Ikki turns around. Shun bursts out laughing.

"Nii-san, she was talking about you!"

Ikki is stunned. He looks at Shun who peels off a grapefruit wedge, it’s big and he has to bite it, it doesn't fit in his mouth.

"What did you tell her?"

Shun chews, squints a little. He licks the corner of his lips, but the juice runs down his chin. "'It's Ikki'."

Ikki wipes the drop with his thumb, brings it to his mouth. As he does so, Shun stares at him. Eyes in which fires dance and tremble.

Ikki feels his palate dry up, his voice thicken. "You don't even know how to eat."

"Yes I know how to eat." Shun peels off another wedge. “It's good, but it's sour. I think it tastes like you, Nii-san. Do you want a taste? " Shun hands it to him, but he doesn't take it. Instead, he squeezes the other’s wrist, draws him to himself and bites the fruit from his hand, splitting the pulp with his teeth, tearing the filaments. Ikki pulls away with a shameless suck, leaving him only a piece. Shun is startled, remains silent for a moment, then laughs - "Nii-san, you are a vandal!" - and puts the rest in his mouth. There is juice on his fingers, running down his arm almost to the inside of his elbow. Shun bends his head to the side and licks it off. It starts from the bottom, goes up slowly, comes to touch Ikki's hand, but only with his nose. They look at each other while he does it. Something hot rises from the insides of both of them and almost suffocates them.

"I'm sticky now," says Shun.

"Me too," Ikki replies, his voice hoarse. 

**4\. Step out of your role and rest yourself on the core of your true desires.** **Cease for a moment your violent deviations. Relinquish the furious indomitable strain.**

They slept together every other night and every other night became every night.

The first night was an accident, or so they said to themselves, in the living room with the French windows open, a compromise between their mutual needs.

They had talked, not of serious matters, but this didn’t make them less important; their mother, the years of separation, then small things – their favourite foods, passion for the sea, how bulky the old helmets were - and it had been strange and tender, to get to know each other again, knowing at the same time that they already knew each other better than anyone else, almost like they were twins. Voices lower and lower, as it got darker, increasingly simple words, longer and longer pauses. The morning surprised Ikki asleep on the carpet and Shun instead on the sofa, with his arm dangling and a hand on Ikki’s shoulder, as if to make sure he was still there.

The third time Ikki gave in, he went to bed with him. Lying down, legs partially gathered, eyes to the window to check if it was still open, nerves strained like violin strings. Imagine the threats of the night, get up, breathe, tame your heartbeat, slip into an uneasy sleep ready to burst in violent jerks, fall asleep again with muscles still contracted. He wakes Shun up, countless times. Shun who saw in him the child lying in the basement with black eyes, crushed knuckles and hidden tears where nobody could see them. Get stronger. Become merciless. Be harder. Then there’s Shun’s hand in the dark, and the only voice that silences all the others: "Onii-chan, we are together."

Shun often grabs on tightly to his shirt. He holds it in his hand, so tight it’s crumpled in the morning. One night Ikki fell asleep on his side and woke up feeling him curled up against his back. A soothing warmth, which drew from the immaculate source of childhood, but not only that. Thick, adult heat too. A drop that dripped over the edge and beyond, clouding the water.

Every night since then, Ikki approached Shun an inch at a time.

Every night since then, Shun slipped closer to Ikki earlier and earlier.

**5\. I feel you in me, every delicate thread of resemblance being soldered by fire and one no longer detects the fissure.**

The sweetness of the juice and the natural sweetness of Shun attract mosquitoes to him. He moves, and then blows them, blows on the stings, but first sucks them. Wet pink marks of saliva on translucent skin.

"Do you ever think about your training?"

Shun has his mouth stuck to the inside of his arm, when he lets go of it 'pops'. "Sometimes."

“I think about it often. Not because of what happened - not only that. It’s that I ask myself a question: why me?" Since Shun is looking at him, he doesn't see the mosquitoes on his arm. Ikki blows them away. "Since the Times of Myth, no one but me has obtained the Phoenix Cloth"

"Nobody else was strong enough."

“It's not just that. I'm strong, I know, but I'm not the only one who is. I'm not even the only one to have suffered, although I once believed it. We Saints of Athena forge ourselves in tears and fire, all of us. This is how we understand the value of hope that is embodied in the Goddess. No, there is something else. Something that only I had."

"Do you know what that is?"

"You."

Shun stops, blinks. A gust of wind makes the last flower left on his braid drop, a hibiscus. Ikki picks it up, slips it back into his hair and his fingers remain there.

“Sacrifice is essential to awaken the Cosmos, and so is hope. But the Phoenix is different. Sacrifice is not enough, it takes desperation. And despair consumes, I found that out the hard way. The Cosmos of the Phoenix is a Cosmos of life. It has to do with the survival instinct, but that's not all. There must be something that surpasses it. Something that is stronger than death, more than despair. Something that makes it burn when every strength, every sense, every instinct is extinguished." He moves his fingers through Shun’s hair. So silky and pleasant to the touch. “That something is you. It’s the thought of you. It's like when I leave, every time. I'll be back because I have to come back to you."

Shun is speechless. He doesn't move, but the rough sea expresses itself for him. His eyes are bright, his cheeks red. His lashes tremble like the wings of a hummingbird. _Don’t look at me like this._ Shun touches the petals of the hibiscus, then his hand. Ikki blows a mosquito off his neck and his brother's whole body seems to shiver with a violent spasm.

"I’m sorry," Ikki says, "did I tickle you?"

"No" Shun whispers. Ikki runs his thumb over a red mark just above his collarbone, blows again, longer. He knows that his breath is hot, he cannot give him relief, nevertheless Shun trembles and also emits a small sound that he immediately imprisons by biting his lip.

_What are we doing?_

Ikki approaches. Runs his thumb along the curve of Shun’s elegant neck like a harp, reaching his collarbones, blowing where he’s touched him. Shun moves his face leaning into the palm of his hand and opens his lips.

Ikki moves away, delicately breaks the contact. In order not to hurt him he is discovering in himself an unthinkable caution, a patience that he did not believe possible. It's a different kind of strength, what it takes to walk away.

The current drains from Shun's body, Ikki sees his shoulders drop. Between them there’s a wave that rises, rises, without ever becoming a tide, and which still leaves them exhausted, conquered.

Ikki starts walking again, leaving him behind. Placing another useless and painful distance between them.

**6\. Silence the sensational course of your body and you will see in me, intact, your own fears, your own pities**

Ikki was learning how to sleep again. His fists loosened, his eyes stayed closed longer. He knew again the sensation of having a sticky mouth, he hadn't felt it for years. Perhaps it could not be called "dreaming", but his mind wove plots and basic messages, rather than torturing him with harsh memories, a deformed mirror of what it had been. He dreamed of Shun and Esmeralda, Esmeralda and Shun. They are the primary colors, the shades perceived by his unconscious, so similar to each other that they become confused. He was carrying a child in his arms, and the child was her; he held her, and when he looked at her it was him.

One night Shun woke up from a nightmare. He didn't say a word, didn't move, but as always Ikki felt it on a nervous level, his brother's tears crashing like natural disasters on his senses.

"Shun" - he turned, while Shun was trying to hide - "Shun" - looking for his head in a tangle of pillows - "Shun" - looking for his face, now **,** his hair stuck to it with tears, behind his hands which hid him - "Shun" - embracing him, finally, as he had not done since they were children, it was surprising how natural it was to do it still, and at the same time so different; their bodies had changed, they had different and new joints, only the precision that united them was the same.

"Sorry" Shun sobbed, realizing he couldn't keep quiet anymore, "I just had a bad dream, I didn't want to wake you up."

"Don't apologize, are you alright?"

Shun was moving. He was sniffling, sweating, breathing. It was dazzling to feel Shun’s life throbbing at no distance from his.

"I’m fine," he replied, because that's what he thought he had to say, but then he took a breath, returned the hug, and Ikki realized that maybe he wasn't lying, that he was really fine, in a way that had to do with them being close in that moment, with having found each other without having to search for one another. Ikki knew that relief, he was getting used to it. He didn't think it was good. There would be new battles, which would impose new distances. The empty space between them would feel even colder.

But now they were close, and that made them happy

Ikki didn't ask about the dream. His torments, his anguishes, he understood them and took them upon himself. They slept together, so much so that when they woke up they had a hard time finding their edges.

It was raining that morning. The grayish light, the fresh air, the smell of grass and wet earth - all the signs of the world outside the open window.

The house was silent, no movement in the rooms, nor in the kitchen, even the moon had just retreated. In the viscosity of sleep Ikki opened his eyes, and saw Shun. He saw him for the first time. Never, since they had met again, had he been able to look at him like this, unhurriedly, with a rested mind, muscles stretched in a state of conservation rather than action.

For the first time in seven years he saw Shun, and what he saw enchanted him.

Shun had grown, not just in height. His ivory body, sculpted with effort, strengthened by hardship. The body of an athlete, whose arms were used to bearing the weight of chains that wounded the skin, whose thighs were burdened countless times with the duty to resist impacts, to get up after falls, just as his shoulders had countless times supported a wounded comrade, including Ikki himself.

Nonetheless, the ivory is lunar white - fresh, smooth - with his innate grace, his unspeakable elegance.

And then, his face. Androgynous, one would say, all eyes and lashes. More than once as a child Ikki had surprised strangers looking at him unsure of his sex, and even now that his body was male beyond all doubt he retained that ancient spell in himself, a charm that lay in the ambiguity of ethereal, incredible beauty.

Innocent, yet intriguing

Shun is bewitching. Something about him awakens undisclosed instincts.

In the silence, Ikki found himself tragically unarmed to resist.

_He could accept you. He could bear it._

Shun moved his head close to his arm. A quiet murmur.

_(Bear what?)_

Ikki brushed Shun’s hair away from his lips.

_Your force._

He stroked his cheek. His shoulder.

_This is the face that even a god envied._

His gaze shifted to his hips, to his bare thighs, under his pajama shorts.

_This is the body that even a god desired._

Shun seemed to wake up - but no, he just moved, settling into his arms. Ikki put his hand on his back. He followed the spinal column with his thumb, yielded to the final supple curve, pressed the pointed tail.

_Don't you want to know if he would hand over to you what he denied to a god?_

Shun opened his eyes, arrows directed at him. He knew where they were, where to find them, how to catch them. And he caught them, so much so that Ikki didn't move. He didn't even stiffen, he felt no tension. Only a sense of numbness, a clear suspension, and the languor of closeness that clung and glided over them, enveloped them.

Shun looked down. He stretched a hand, placed it on his chest.

He was hesitant at first to guess his geography, then more confident as he explored it, as if to verify that under his shirt it was the same as it appeared from the outside. A delicate touch, only with the fingertips, which, even so, drew all of Ikki's energy to it like a magnet.

_Don't you want what not even a god could have?_

Shun looked up. Everything they cannot say, was lingering between them

A door slammed in the corridor, the first cautious shouting of the morning spread over the stairs. It was still raining, but lightly.

Ikki took his hands away from Shun.

Shun reluctantly pulled his away from him.

**7\. I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly.**

The night has engulfed the bonfires, but a moon almost as bright as the sun still traces their path. They follow it in silence, slipping, climbing, the rocks release the accumulated heat under the palms of their hands turning them lukewarm. Beyond the bay, the cliffs. The old woman from the pension said that nobody goes there anymore, after the landslide and the last tide that took the beach away, but what is dangerous for the inhabitants is nothing for Ikki, it doesn't exist.

After the jump he turns, as if to help Shun - which is perfectly fine on his own, obviously. He’s already walking on the dark sand, absentmindedly arranging the flower that has moved a little.

Ikki doesn't have to help him, doesn't have to protect him now, not anymore. Yet he needs to have to do it, he needs to believe it, because if he can't protect him then what can he do for him? Hyoga can comfort him, Shiryu can reassure him, Seiya can make him smile. Since he was born Ikki has only protected him, and now he can't do anything else. He needs his brother to need him, but he also likes that he doesn't. It makes him proud and a little sad at the same time.

“Nii-san,” says Shun, “you think I'm some kind of angel, but that's not the case. I'm not perfect, you know?"

"That’s right," Ikki smiles, “You’re a crybaby and you can’t impose yourself on others, do you really think I don’t know?”

"I'm also selfish at times."

“That’s the only thing you are not, Shun. Never."

Shun looks at him, and smiles, like a child who is sick of having a secret, but is pleased that he has managed to keep it for so long:

“Seriously, Nii-san? Instead I have been weak, more than once, and it has made me selfish." Shun bends down and fills his hands with sand. He opens them, but it stands still because there is no wind. "When you halted your fist, and Hades told you with my mouth that my life was worth more to you than that of millions of people ... in that moment, I ... even if only for a moment, and I feel guilty even just repeating it now ... I was happy."

Ikki does not answer. Shun drops the sand, then rubs his hands and gets up. Without waiting for him, he starts walking again.

**8\. You will see love which was excluded from the passions given you, and I will see the passions excluded from love.**

Afterwards, it’s a waterfall. Sensations that break violently at every slightest, insignificant gesture. A glance from below, the teeth. Lips, never so present in his thoughts. Shun already yawns at seven, but that growing haste collides with the slowness in which the room sinks as soon as they lay down, as if every movement was suddenly crushed under an indescribable pressure.

Shun's fingers sliding on his arms. He chats in the meanwhile, like that gesture means nothing, but it means everything. Ikki's fingers reaching for his hair with every excuse. Then he hugs him, Shun making a nest over his shoulder. A kiss on the head, just one. There’s nothing more, of course, but there _is_ more. It’s something that comes from inside them and sometimes overflows their skin or their eyelids. Shun's eyes, windows narrowed on his desires. If Ikki had tried to enter them, he would not have prevented him from doing so, as he had not prevented him from biting him under the neck, as a joke – when as a child he pretended to be a wolf, he chased him and Shun hid, laughing and running on his unsteady legs - and that game had shattered his brain like not even the most powerful blows.

Shun’s smell. Shun's vulnerable throat. Shun’s legs, now strong, that instead of running away, repel him, force him to block them with his own, to spread them wide to hold him still with his weight. The tremors of Shun’s body, of his breathing.

One night they both fell asleep on their side, Shun with his back against Ikki’s chest, Ikki with an arm over him, hand on his, over his belly, to enclose him. It was the most perfect thing that had ever happened to him, and he soiled it. He turned away from Shun, and that made his guilt worse **.** Where there was an unspoken mutual private agreement, now there was the shameful reaction of his body, as explicit and violent as he was. There was a sense of guilt again, it sucked.

He made excuses for days after that. Pretending not to pick up on the signs, just wanting to sleep, “come on at our age, aren't we old for lullabies?”. He was pretending and his brother understood it. On the threshold, one evening, Shun peered at him from under those bewitching lashes and said in a quiet voice.

"Nii-san, don't you think I hear it too?" He touched his belly. “It’s like a drum, here.”

**9\. Cease trembling and shaking and gasping and cursing and find again your core which I am.**

It is what they described, or more; a vertical digging into the heart of the place, far from everything, except the sea. Over the centuries the water has shaped the embrace of the rock around itself. Just as emerald as the water, just as clear in its rippling, Shun walks with his mouth open, taking in the whiteness of the moon together with the vegetation on the walls. His eyes are stripped of the corolla of melancholy that normally frames them and finally reveal themselves in their unique, pure glow. Eyes that have aroused in Ikki a devotion that not even Athena herself has ever managed to equal. Eyes that saw in him what he had to become, that guided him and fulfilled his destiny. Eyes of a boy who touches a stalagmite, intrigued, then turns, looks at him, and smiles.

"It's incredible."

"I know".

Shun rests his cheek against the stone.

"Nii-san," he begins, "when you told me you can't give up anger, didn't you mean sorrow?"

He doesn't answer.

"Are you so used to pain that you don't know how you would live without?"

"Maybe" he admits. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t find anything quite so familiar.” 

"Not even me?"

"You confuse me sometimes."

"What do you mean?"

“Disarm me. One moment I seem to understand what you think, the next I have no idea."

"Then ask."

He smiles. Shun puffs up his cheeks and hugs the stalagmite dejectedly.

"You're the one who confuses me," he murmurs.

_What are you thinking about? What do you really feel?_

“Nii-san, I don't want to tie you down. Neither change nor frighten you."

"I'm not scared."

"But I am, because I'm afraid of losing you."

_I fear it too, and there are no feelings or desires that justify that risk. Everything is transient, but you, only you, are not._

"You won't lose me, that’s impossible."

"Thank you. But you see, I'm happy. Even when I feel like crying, or you make me angry because you don't talk… when we're together, Nii-san, I'm always happy. " It doesn't look like it now. Shun smiles, but it's a sad smile. “I accepted that it's strange, and that I shouldn't feel this way, but if that's the price of having you in this life, that's okay. I can recognize evil, I had it inside me, and I know very well that there is no shadow of evil in what I feel. That’s why I decided to accept it without tormenting myself, and to let myself be happy. "

Ikki doesn't know if he's watching him. He grits his teeth, he can't move even a muscle, because if he did he would scream: there is no evil, but there is no good either, because I am not like you; I want to invade you as evil invaded you, vomit up my anger, my anguish and my hunger inside your heart, fill you to the brim with my demons and use you to purify me in you. We are so tightly intertwined, the two of us, can we even tell what we want from each other anymore? The ancestral tangle of our roots may be sacred, but it fucked up **.**

Shun surrenders to his silence. "Anyway, I'm not asking you anything, just that you also understand that you can be happy." A crack in his voice, it lasts a moment. “And if you can't do it yourself, then I hope someone will perform this miracle for you. Even if that someone couldn’t be me."

"Of course it would be you."

Shun is watching him. His eyes are bright, his cheeks flushed. Ikki knows it because he too is watching him now, and he can't lie to him. Shun smiles. He bites the corner of his lip, as if to restrain himself, not to smile more or not to cry, but he can't. He slips behind the stalagmite, so as not to let him see him, Ikki hears him sniffling. After a while he leans out, with his liquid eyes he does that thing of staring at him that enchants him, and then disappears again.

_Who could but you?_

Ikki hears the suspenders first. They unhook, fall to the ground. The rustle of the shirt. The belt, followed by the pants.

Shun comes out from behind the rock in his underwear. He turns around and takes off those too. Then he looks at him over his shoulder, only with the flower on.

"Shall we take a bath?" A shy smile, but with which he teases him. "Don't be embarrassed, we are brothers, right?"

**10\. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, we share the same madness.**

They had never fought before. One moment there was cutlery, chairs, brisk steps - they were all there that day - and the next Shun was silent. This was enough, he didn't need to shout; it was the way Shun hid his heart from him, holding it tightly in his fist so that he wouldn't see it.

Three words were enough, said with studied lightness: “I'm leaving tomorrow”. Three words to break the most beautiful thing in that room.

When they were alone, Shun asked, “Is it my fault? Is it because I always cling to you?"

"No," he replied, but it was a yes. They had been so close that now any distance seemed too far.

_You've already allowed me to hurt you in the past, would you forgive me the same way if I hurt you again?_

He cautiously approached him and he saw a tear

_I can't stay here knowing that you wouldn’t hate me if I hurt you_

_Tell me that you would be ready to move away from me, that you won’t trust me_ . 

Shun rubbed his eyes, pretending to be strong.

_The gods know how hard it is to leave you when you look at me like that._

"I always make you cry."

"Just because you're stubborn."

“I can't stay here anymore. The walks in the garden, the servants ... how can I live like this?"

"I'm sorry there isn't a war."

"You know what I mean ..."

"No, I don't know because you won’t tell me!" He raised his voice. He seemed amazed at himself, as if he didn't know that his body had that capability. He bit his lip, but it didn't help. "You promised we would always be together, instead you just leave and I don't know why!"

Ikki tried to touch him, but he pulled away. He hurt himself with that gesture. He began to cry like a child.

_Shun, damn, I want to hold you._

_To hold you not as I used to hold you, but as I regret never having held Esmeralda._

_How a man wants to hold a woman._

“I can only move if I have nothing around to break. How can I lose something if I have nothing to lose? " He opened his fingers, which ache from the tension. “When I’m with you for too long I soften. I start to wonder what I would feel if I lost you, hoping I wouldn't have to fight anymore. But if I'm too afraid of losing you, how can I fight to protect you?"

“So you wish you had nothing to lose? If you fear nothing, you love nothing. But if you love nothing, what's the point of fighting? "

He couldn't help it, he yelled. “That applies to you, not to me! This place takes away my anger, Shun! You take it away! "

Looking at his brother’s frightened face, he finally understood: he was a beast.

The wild Bronze Saint, the boy-wolf. He had learned not to harm the herd by isolating himself, to watch it on the sidelines and not to poison it with his bad moods, with his inability to be sincere without being brutal. It had changed over time, but not enough. There was something inside him that kept fidgeting, that roared, that couldn’t have peace. He had to be fierce, always hungry, otherwise ...

"Do you think I would have the same strength, without anger?" He spoke in a calm voice this time. Resigned. “I am your heavy artillery. My Cosmo is aggressive, that's why it's strong. I need that strength to protect. To protect you. "

He stopped. He noticed he was trembling only when Shun picked up his hand like a lost and delicate object. No one touched him as if his body were alive, human, fragile - only Shun.

“Do you remember the battle against Neptune? The others had Gold Cloths, but I had you. As we hugged each other, I felt our united Cosmos become immense. I have never felt so strong, not even in Elysium." He put his hand on his cheek. That warm contact, wet with tears, calmed Ikki's nerves and engulfed him like the surf.

 _Do you see what I mean?_ he thought, exhausted.

“We were on the edge,” Ikki said, “we might not have made it. I held you because if that was the end, you should have known that the last thing that came between you and death was me." He wiped a tear away with his thumb, above the cheekbone. “We are Knights of Athena, Shun. One day something will kill us, and if it gets to you it will mean that it was stronger than me. But I promise you this: when that day comes, the last thing you will see will be your brother who dies trying to defend you."

"I don't want you to defend me" Shun snapped, "I want you to take me with you!" He rested his forehead against his chest. "I want to come with you!"

Ikki put a hand around his head as he wept.

"You wouldn't have a normal life," He told him, knowing full well they never would, as they never had in the past. Shun didn't think of it, or he thought it and didn't say it, because holding on to his shirt he replied: "I don't want a normal life, I want a life with you."

**11\. What you burnt, broke, and tore is still in my hands. I am the keeper of fragile things and I have kept of you what is indissoluble.** ****

“ _I would like to take you where nobody knows us,” Ikki said. “A place where the dawn comes early and the sun goes down late. One where the sea has the color of your eyes and the sand that of the inside of your wrists. I can't imagine anything more beautiful than that."_

Shun glides into the water as if he were water himself; nature exalts him, the waves embrace him, choirs of drops sing the line of his arms as he lifts them to knot his hair. Shun mixes with the setting with such ease that it seems to Ikki that he is returning to where he belongs, to the forces that have entrusted it to him, and the thought makes him nervous - he is mine, he thinks.

Then Shun turns, looks for his gaze, and the elements that make up the world, first fixed in a precise position, begin to arrange themselves in a circle around him. Ikki is nobody to escape that smile - even the earth's axis bows to his presence.

_“We would hide the Cloths, pretend they are luggage. We would ask for a room for two, but we would sleep like this, in one bed. We would not tell anyone that we are brothers, so at some point we would forget it too.”_

Shun draws him to himself. He doesn’t need to talk to him, the sight of his neck is enough. Of His small but solid shoulders, well made. Of The violin curve of his back, which reveals the vertebrae Ikki knows so well already, as he bends down to pick up a stone from the bottom. He hides behind the stones, then leans out and disappears again, showing white glimpses of his body like an uninhibited nymph.

If only he weren't so pure. Not because he is naive, or because he doesn’t know malice. He is pure because everything he does flows straight from his heart, which shimmers. He cannot offer ambiguity, only sentiment. Authentic, uncontaminated, a feeling from which you can only drink with your hands, impossible to define, to corrupt, to dilute.

This is what Ikki is afraid of, not of the feeling itself, but of not deserving it, of not being up to it. Because he can no longer lie, there is something between them that assails them. It centers in their vitals, transforms the relief of seeing each other into extreme joy, and dread into a two-part mantra that resonates even on the battlefield - _Nii-san! Shun!_

It's gravity; it exerts a force of attraction that transcends distance, so that if Shun needs him, Ikki feels it in his bones, his blood molecules are attracted to Shun’s

It is not just because they are brothers. It is because their Cosmos are entangled from the Time of Myth and have sought each other in every form until they were born side by side in this age as brothers.

It's because - Shun.

He is the reason.

_“And would we eat fresh fruit? Would we swim in the open sea in the middle of the night?"_

It was him in the cradle, he in the flowers at Death Queen Island, he on Esmeralda's rosy face. Even in death, he who resounded in oblivion.

The center of gravity, the part of himself that he was convinced he had lost, had actually always been there. From the beginning, it had always been Shun.

_"Only if you don't go too far, I don't want to have to fish you out."_

_“Look, I swim very well, Nii-san, I did my test for the Cloth underwater, don't you know? I may have to be the one to save you."_

_"You already did it." he smiled at him. "You always do."_

Now he’s one step away from the shore, his own personal precipice.

Shun is watching him, his eyes two cliffs between now and after, one step would be enough.

Poised on the wire, the two of them between sky and abyss.

A look that contains no thoughts, only a look.

The water that conducts a single stream of desire.

Ikki takes off his shoes. _(You still have time, stop now.)_

He takes off his shirt, grabbing it from behind, exposing scars, scabs, burns in a single tug. _(Cover up, haven't you seen it? He’s a butterfly and you're a battle bull, meat for the grinder.)_

Shun doesn't stop looking at him. He is enraptured, enchanted by him.

_Here is my heart, you can hit it. It's above the liver and under the lungs, I'm not hiding it anymore._

Shun's blink attracts hydrogen, dust, plasma; the Phoenix ignites his stars and all together they explode forming nebulae, like supernovae. _(You will hurt him. You will ruin his life, what has already happened to Esmeralda will happen to him.)_

Ikki does not wear underwear. He takes off his pants.

_(It's too late, there's no turning back. Idiot, you'll regret it.)_

_I have nothing to hide from you. You are the other half of me._

_"And then?" Shun asked, with a smile buried in the pillow._

He enters the sea, in his gravitational field. Shun awaits him a galaxy away, the last object visible to the naked eye in space. He doesn't move, he lets Ikki get closer, but each step raises a deafening rhythmic song that expands, reaches him and crashes on his senses, with a vitality that if he were less robust would make him waver. Ikki is caught in the spiral of his milky rings which arrange themselves around him like chains of defense, but open for Ikki without hesitation.

Shun is waiting for him in the center. A wonderful white dwarf at the edge, just waiting for him to collapse. He reaches out and touches his chest. He is still bruised above the stomach, where he took Hades' blow full without armor.

"I'm sorry," says Ikki, "I know I’m not a pretty sight”

"You're perfect," Shun replies, stunned.

Ikki takes his hand, kisses it.

He takes his face in his hands and his indelicate fingers unwittingly untie the knot of his hair, which falls ruffled over his shoulders.

_You are perfect. It is inexplicable, unfair, that you are willing to settle for me._

“I will always be your brother. You won't lose me no matter what. "

Shun barely nods, but his adam’s apple as small as a pebble trembles.

“I want what you want to give me,” says Ikki. “Whatever it is, nothing more. If you want you can also take it back, I will accept it. But I need to know what you think. I can't be wrong about this. I'll ask you just once, please be honest: what do you want me to be for you?"

For a moment it is as if Shun disappeared. He’s so busy looking at him, listening to him, that it seems he can’t believe what he’s hearing. But then, he says: “Everything, Nii-san”. 

Shun touches his fingers, and then his wrist bone.

"My brother."

It slides on the forearm up to the elbow.

"A comrade in arms”

Still up, up to the shoulder.

"My best friend."

It stops on the neck and the vein starts beating as he wishes.

"My lover."

The water is heating up, simmering in a single pulse.

Ikki's hand sinks into his hair and grabs him under the nape of the neck.

_“Then we'd both hear that drumming. And we would no longer remember any reason not to listen to it."_

The hibiscus flower falls. He believed that Shun cared for it, he kept touching it, but he doesn't even notice it when Ikki draws him close

He hears his breath, and it tears the universe apart.

He feels his lips and the universe, the universe now open, has its colors.

**12\. I want to love you wildly. I don’t want words, but inarticulate cries, meaningless, from the bottom of my most primitive being**

It's not like drinking after a long scorching heat. It's more like setting fire to an already sunburnt land, like raining boiling water on ice.

There is a second in which they get lost; the Ikki who rocked Shun as a child, the Ikki who is kissing him. Then things recalibrate after the jolt and he is the same Ikki, who can no longer part with the same Shun.

Ikki doesn't know how to react to caresses, but he discovers that he knows how to react to Shun’s mouth, to the requests he makes, to the answers he gives him.

It's liquid fire, sighs, teeth, rough tongues and soft lips, warm palates. His moans excite him.

Shun turns him on, now he can say it. He can accept martyrdom for this. For him, who reacts to his touch like a diamond to the light, he who has kept Ikki's hopes, fears, naivety, weaknesses for years, accepted them in his place, protected them in his place, loved them in his place. Ikki is ready to take them back now, because he knows he cannot afford second thoughts, if he wants to love him he must love him all and give him everything. Shun does not deserve tensions, distortions, half attempts and ghosts of the past. He deserves love, in all the ways he can give it to him.

"Ikki" he whispers, as if praying. He wants Ikki to take him, even the pores of his skin are breathing him in. Moans guide him to discover the secret place where he has hidden a soft marble of desire that only his fingers can touch. He imagines squeezing it, pressing it, sucking it, stroking it. Imagines playing with him as with a kitten, imagines their limbs entangled in a tight tangle and the two of them pierced by a joy so violent that it leaves them torn apart.

Shun moves and their crotches touch.

He moves again and they rub together, in a burst of sighs.

"Shun" Ikki gasps, "wait."

“For what?”

“To calm me down.”

"You don't have to calm down."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't."

"What if I can't control myself?"

"If you don't kiss me, I won't control myself, I'll burst into tears again."

"What if I kiss you until I can’t stop anymore” 

Shun smiles. "Then I'll cry for joy."

Ikki lifts him as if it were weightless, a leaf in the wind.

Shun’s arms around his neck, legs around his waist; Ikki’s arms around his waist, dark hands on his thighs, dripping as they come out of the sea; belly to belly, chest to chest, mouth to mouth, shoulders, throats - skin to skin, breathing. 

Ikki places him on the shore, and stays on his knees to admire him, with the lunar reflections of the water flickering on him, and knows that he’s open for him, that it is only he who is waiting. Ikki is already in him, not in the flesh, but with everything else. It is the agitated breathing in his belly, the chills on his thighs, the blood that feeds the tension of his sex and that makes his cheeks purple.

He made his lips shiny - he even cut them in a corner with his violent kisses. Shun's arms claim him, Ikki bows and Shun welcomes him with his arms and legs, enveloping him.

He kisses him. He laughs into the kiss and Ikki laughs with him.

_He is not afraid of me. How could I have thought he would be?_

"I don't know what to do," he admits. “In every way”

"Me neither," Shun replies, not at all worried. "The important thing is that you never take your hands off me again."

It’s like nothing else.

Shun's feeling is only comparable to Shun himself.

Finally being at the right distance, that is, without distance.

Shun has the sea inside, cradles it and sweeps it away, every movement is like a hailstorm on his senses. There is no imbalance, nothing of one crushing the other. Ikki does not flinch from Shun's grace, Shun does not succumb to Ikki's brutal thrusts. The fire burns them but does not consume them, the chains tighten without binding them.

Shun is repeating his name and says "Nii-san, it’s beautiful. I feel you inside me",

Ikki hardly breathes and replies: "I feel you inside me too".

Shun bites his fingers and Ikki takes them away, pinning his arms to the ground, goes up with his hands until he takes his - a tangle of fingers and hair - and holding him continues to penetrate him, while they cannot unlock their eyes. There is no shame, no embarrassment, no malice. Only sensuality, that flows pure from their bellies and glues them together. At one point the gasps become cries, the moaning sobs, and Ikki sees that Shun is crying. He stops suddenly, frightened, and says “what is it, did I hurt you? Let's stop, please forgive me”.

“Don’t you dare!” he sobs, then laughs. "I'm embarrassed.I love this so much, I feel like I’m dying”

Ikki smiles. He bites that mouth that has decided everything and doesn't know it. The mouth he followed to the end of the world, outside of death, up to here.

“From now on I’ll make you cry only from this”

There sky is a round vault with them on the bottom, like in an amphora. The moon has moved and now everything is stars, the lapping of waves and breathing.

"That's a piece of the Virgin," Shun says, pointing. “And further on you can't see it, but there is the Lion. They are always visible together. "

“So the Lion has to run to the help of the Virgin. Poor Lion."

Shun protests, tries to move, but Ikki laughs and holds him to himself. He looks at him and sees that his eyes shine happily. He kisses him and feels that in that noisy kiss, only lips, there’s something that reminds him of their children’s games - that kind of childish intimacy

He doesn't feel bold, more man.

He feels innocent, instead, clean again.

"It wasn't strange, was it?" Shun asks, and nibbles a little smile. Ikki knows perfectly well what he means, he says "no" and nothing else is needed, everything is already there. Loving him expelled the toxins. He drew out his poison and came out unscathed, healthy as a reed.

_As usual, I underestimated you, my love._

_I thought I was condemning you, but it was you who purified me._

Shun smiles, relieved. He rests on his chest and taps his fingers, imitating his heartbeat.

"Why did you bite yourself while we were making love?"

'Make love'. Ikki has to get used to hearing him say it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't like hearing him say it, or that he doesn't want to hear it for hours. He looks at his left arm, the hollowed-out set of teeth which is bleeding. He understands that Shun loves his signs. That he is for Shun the embodiment of strength as Shun is for him of sweetness. They are not opposites that attract, the two of them, they are the product of each other, the consequence of each other. They are one the intimate and secret need of the other.

“To hold me back. Stay on the ground. Shun, I would like to do things to you… ”He strokes his shoulder. "Letting go too much is not wise."

Shun was lying down, but he gets on all fours and he kisses the mark. “Nii-san, I don't know what's going to happen out of here. But while we're here, take me as you want, as often as you want." He looks at him from below. Green eyes, with lashes like peacock feathers. “What doesn't let you sleep, burn it inside me. The desires of your body, and those of your heart, I want to fulfill them all. " he takes his hand. He blushes a little, but still sucks two fingers, which Ikki passes over his lips. Shun guides them on his neck, and then on to his chest. On his nipple, which hardens. Ikki approaches with his face and kisses it, begins to lick it - it looks like a small almond, but it is pink as a peach. Shun holds the moans inside and hugs his head, trembling. "Make love to me until you are satisfied, and if you never are, then never stop."

Ikki holds him close, has his hair on his forehead.

_How long have I wanted you?_

He squeezes his thighs, his butt.

The more he tried to ignore it, the more desire has buried itself inside him

"In fact," Ikki says in a hoarse voice, more confident than he actually is, "I'm really tired of hell." He bites his side, the pelvis bone. _Can I really have you?_ He pulls Shun into his arms until he is in front of him. _Can I get used to the idea of not having to leave you anymore?_ Shun presses close to him and Ikki embraces him. "Take your responsibilities and take me straight to paradise."

**13\. I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.**

The day surprises them already intent on loving each other, still half asleep, immersed in the languor of the most intimately restful sleep that both have ever experienced. He feels lazy, without urgency, Shun's body welcomes him back as if he had not noticed his absence and Ikki keeps his chest close to his back, his mouth on his ear, so that the moans do not pierce the veil of pleasant numbness prematurely.

"Am I still dreaming?" Shun asks softly. “Because I dreamed of it so much, Nii-san. I felt guilty, I didn't know what to do. But I dreamed it so much. "

Then back in the water while they bathe. Depending on where you taste it, Shun's skin tastes different, but now it tastes all of salt. It is the smell that is always the same, a smell that absorbs his own, holds it, finally releases it in a seductive whiff that melts the core of Ikki's resistances and invades him, invades his essence.

He catches Shun from behind, to daunt him, keeps his hands firm on the opalescent stalagmite and asks:

"Would you think it disrespectful if I took you like this?"

“Nii-san, you are always disrespectful. But I confess that I don't mind. "

Ikki laughs against his neck as he brushes his wet hair. “You will consume me, Shun. I will really burn everything and you will have to look for someone else. A girl, maybe. That ... what was her name?"

“As intense as she is, I don't think June can compare to you. Maybe a boy would be better."

“Hey,” he scolds him, with a pinch on his butt, and Shun laughs, “Nii-san, I'm kidding. You know very well that I would only talk about you."

"Is that so? And would you tell them everything?"

"All."

"Absolutely all?"

"All."

Ikki holds his hips steady and slides inside him with a single thrust, as he had never done before. "This also?"

Shun gasps, holds his breath. Not a moan of displeasure from his mouth, just a tender and lewd “yes”.

"And what would you tell him?"

He starts breathing again. "That I loved a man." He supports the movement of his body, invites him more deeply into himself. "Who was the majestic Phoenix Saint." The water evaporates and bubbles around them. "That he was my brother." he moans, reaches out to hold him still as if begging him to stay there. "And that when he was inside me, none of it mattered."

Approaching to the surface the afternoon becomes more aggressive and the smell of the sea lighter. A breath of sultry air pushes sand into the burrow, the reverberation of the water in the cave recedes.

He looks down and sees that Shun has stopped, he is hesitating. Dressed like this, he almost does not recognize him, he is again breakable. The worn clothes cover his strength and unprejudiced joy, together with the red kisses, the bites, the scratches of the stone - Ikki has his own, the scratches on his back, on his hips, on his shoulders, he likes to see them emerge from under his sleeves. Shun looks up and doesn't need to talk, Ikki understands. The fear of returning to the world, of offering that feeling to the world, to the grin of fate, to the jaws of time.

 _Don’t be afraid,_ he would like to tell him _, because it is true, this love is new like the day, but also old like the universe. And don't think that I'm not afraid, that I don't ask myself what is waiting for us out of here._

_Will there be new trials, new wars? Will I be strong enough to face them with you, even though I am leaving what was left of anger at the bottom of this cave? I am happy, and I am scared because I have no way to protect this happiness, to reinforce it, to hide it where no one can take it from me. The face that I saw be born, will I be able to see it grow old or will it be torn away from me still perfect, identical to the day I finally took it in my hands and kissed it?_

Shun looks down, twists his fingers. Ikki cannot speak.

_Have doubts about the gods, about luck, but not about us, because I'll be with you._

Shun opens his mouth, his voice trembles. “Nii-san,” he begins, “I wanted to thank you. These days together, and this night ... it was ... "- _stop, don't say it was beautiful_ -" ... it was beautiful, and I won’t hold it against you if…”]

"If what?" Ikki interrupts him. Abruptly, he regrets it, but he doesn't have time to apologize for it, Shun is trying to smile: “Here, you see, I'm already whimpering. Sorry, I did not want to. It's just that… Nii-san, you've been taking care of me all your life. You don't have to… ”- Shun wants you to stop him. His lips are begging him to stop him, to reassure him, but Ikki doesn't know what to say, so he remains silent.

He thinks of the first time he saw him, a bean in a white onesie; he wasn't crying then, on the contrary he was smiling, he stretched his little hand up to him, and Ikki already loved him. But it was later that he fell in love with him. After losing him for six years, and finding him again. From the tears that had awakened him, every word, every gesture ... one look at a time, one smile at a time ... and now his skin, extending to the surface of all the things Ikki can touch.

It was written in the stars, but it wasn't already decided.

The gods, fate, Mr. Kido - they had all decided for them, but not this. This is what they chose, in the present, in this time. They are choosing it right now.

Ikki goes back down the path of the rocks and arrives in front of Shun, who trembles and tries not to cry.

"What happened I will keep in my heart, so ..."

_Shun, I am you. And you, Shun, are me._

Ikki brushes Shun’s hair off his face. He can no longer speak.

_You will put up with my bad moods, I will be patient with your hesitation. I will be the closed door between you and evil, you the open crack between me and the sun._

A tear wets his finger. Ikki brings it to his lips and it tastes like his back when he kissed it out of the sea

_I will protect your fragile body, I will love your fragile heart._

He sinks a hand into his hair, under the nape of his neck. It’s frizzy, knotted with salt. Touching him like this seemed impossible. Now Shun draws him to him and feels him sink into his arms.

_If we are not reborn as brothers, I will find you as a stranger._

_If you wake up like Hades, I will be your shield as a Specter._

_If we are not reborn at all and remain nothing, then I will find you anyway, and we will be nothing together._

_But as long as we are Knights, I promise you, it will be as it has been until now._

_You will be Athena's Knight, and I will be Shun's Knight._

"I love you."

It is a click that opens a door, the tension that breaks the crystal.

Can you feel someone's eyelashes through a shirt? Ikki feels Shun's, wet stems of rain rushing in search of the sun.

He begins to cry, first softly, then like a torrent, a mighty summer downpour which, however, already hides the sun. Indeed, he laughs, as he sniffles, and from the sobs and laughter his shoulders are jolting so hard that Ikki has to squeeze him harder to hold him together, that body that beats warm and alive like a heart.

Shun says something, it's not clear what - but he knows, he doesn't need to hear it.

Shun tries to look at him, then laughs, and his face shines.

They have a strange history, it's true. It is made up of erosions, landslides, anomalies that have irreversibly changed a previously perfectly linear geography. It is made up of losses, of things that they cannot get back, and perhaps one day it will also be made of inquiring looks.

But it's a love story. In the complex design of the universe, in the destiny of those born under the constellations, it is not a gift that everyone receives.

Shun calms down, wipes his tears with his arm and reaches for his hand.

"Shall we go?"

"We are in no hurry."

"No" he smiles, and squeezes tight, "but let's go anyway".


End file.
